Our next list features the other end of the spectrum

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Forest land is capable of absorbing large amounts of carbon. The forests in the Congo and Brazil, two of the most resource rich countries, generate over three quarters of their available natural resources. Land used for food production–growing crops, raising livestock, or fishing–provides over half of the resources available from six of the ten most resource rich countries. Built-up land contributes a nearly negligible portion.

After ranking countries by the size of their demand for natural resources and the size of the country’s ability to produce and replenish those resources, we wanted to know which countries live within their ecological means, and which countries rack up ecological debt.

To do this, we subtracted a country’s ecological footprint (how much it takes from the environment) from its biocapacity (how much it puts back into the environment) to find its net biocapacity in global hectares per person. Below are the top ecological creditors and debtors ranked by net per capita footprint.


South American countries like French Guiana and Suriname contribute the most net biocapacity per person. Forests are highly productive in terms of natural resources. More than just the goods that come from forests, they consume and trap carbon. However, those countries are fairly small and consume a fraction of what the most resource-hungry countries consume.



Luxembourg, a micronation neighboring Germany, ranks number one with an 11.51 global hectare per person deficit. Singapore, Belgium, South Korea, the Netherlands, Japan, Switzerland, Malta and the United Kingdom all place in the top 25 biggest ecological debtors. Oil producing countries such as Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Libya also rank highly.

We wondered if a country’s affluence was related to the amount of natural resources it could consume. Are the countries that don’t destroy the environment simply the ones who haven’t yet built up their economies?

We plotted the size of the ecological footprint against Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for each country. There’s a large amount of inequality in how GDP and ecological footprint are distributed, with the top few accounting for as much as all the rest combined. To keep those outliers at the top from distorting the picture, we performed a log transformation on both sets of numbers.


Countries that use the most resources typically have the highest GDP, while countries with low GDPs generally use the least resources. The correlation between the two is strong and positive — footprint increases as GDP increases. We fit a linear regression from GDP to footprint. It has an r-squared value of .843–GDP explains the vast majority of the variation in ecological footprint.

With GDP explaining so much of how much a country consumes, we wanted to see how the 50 largest economies performed. Positive numbers indicate an ecological surplus. People in those australia whatsapp number data countries consume less than nature replenishes. Negative numbers show a deficit, where people consume more than their land can support.


Canada is the most environmentally friendly major economy and tops the list with 7.42 global hectares per person of surplus. There are 13 countries from the 50 largest that produce surplus; the remainder take more than they put back. South Korea rounds out the bottom of the list with a 5.19 global hectares per person deficit. The United States has the second worst environmental track record by this measure.

Ecological footprint provides an accounting system for comparing the effect on our ecological account balance of many different types of human activity, such as weighing deforestation in the Amazon against the adoption of renewable energy sources in the United States. Bringing our global demand for biological resources back in line with what the earth can support has different implications for different countries.

As it turns out, having a large economy is a very good predictor you’ll be consuming more of the environment than you replace. As countries look to grow, the trend of environmental destruction will likely continue unless these countries take action to change course.